Showing posts with label Android. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Android. Show all posts

Monday, October 31, 2011

Android Was The Only OS That Grew Share In Last Quarter

Google AndroidAndroid is the only platform that has grown over the last year in all the key markets surveyed by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. All the rest of mobile operating systems saw their market shares either stay flat or decline in at least one geography.


The figures, which compile smartphone sales for the last 12 weeks ended October 2, paint a pretty stark picture showing which platform is benefiting most from the growth in smartphone usage by consumers.

Taking the markets of Australia, Brazil, Germany, Great Britain, France, Italy, Spain and the U.S., the Android platform grew its share of smartphone sales anywhere between 19.3 percent and 50.4 percent).

Spain took the crown for the biggest amount of Android growth at 50.4 percent. Android Was The Only OS That Grew

Just under half of the U.K. population now owns a smartphone, and Google's mobile operating system Android is powering half of those those being sold,  followed by RIM's BlackBerry models with 22.5% and Apple's iPhone at 18.5 percent, for example.  Android grows share

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Apple iPhone 50% More Bandwidth Efficient than Android?

Sprint thinks iPhone is 50% More Bandwidth Efficient
"There is a misperception that our launch of the iPhone will increase the load on Sprint 3G network and require us to spend more 3G capital," says Sprint CEO Dan Hesse. "The reverse is true."

"IPhone users are expected to use significantly less data than the typical user of a dual-mode, 3G-4G device," he says. Apple iPhone might help Sprint on bandwidth


"Even adjusting for more total new customers being added to the network, we believe it will put less load on our 3G network than they would have if we did not carry the iPhone."

Some of that difference might be due to user behavior, but some is undoubtedly related to signaling overhead, something AT&T worked on with Apple, and which is being addressed in the latest update to the Android operating system as well. Signaling overhead a big issue


As it turns out, mobile applications and handsets can be tweaked to reduce signaling load on mobile radios, something that alleviates network congestion. Signaling can cause congestion




Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Bearish View of The Smart Phone Business

1Here's a bearish view about the smart phone business. Microsoft and Apple are extracting royalty payments from Google Android suppliers, squeezing their margins.

Apple missed targets for iPhone sales and sales of Research In Motion’s BlackBerry have "collapsed," not to mention the recent multi-day global outage.

Analysts may argue that the rise of products like powerful tablets have hurt smart phone sales. Some of us think that is partly true. Tablet sales have grown much faster than did sales of Apple iPhones or iPods.

4So attention now has been diverted to tablets, to some extent. But Mary Meeker, Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers partner doesn't appear to share the pessimism.

But lower-cost smart phones now are about to pour onto the market, and the high penetration of mobiles means there still is a huge replacement market.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

In U.S., New Smart Phone Buyers Increasingly Choose Android

Smartphone OS ShareSome 43 percent of all U.S. smart phone owners have an Android device. But if you ask only those who got a new smartphone in the past three months what kind of phone they chose, more than half (56 percent) told Nielsen they picked an Android device.

The preferences of these so-called “recent acquirers” are important as they are often a leading indicator of where the market is going.

Apple iOS remains popular in second place with 28 percent of all smartphone users, and the same percentage among those who recently got a new device.

Monday, September 19, 2011

Android and iOS apps combined hit 1 million

Android and iOS apps combined hit 1 million
Android and iOS combined for a total of one million applications, according to app tracker Apps Fire.

This number shows all applications that have been developed on both platforms, but doesn’t mean that today you’ll find exactly one million apps if you combine the two largest mobile app stores, since some apps run on both platforms.

It isn't always so easy to figure out what it all means, though.

Some apps are helpful for branding or marketing, while others actually represent new products and categories. A million Android and iOS apps

Large brands use apps to create or support major ad campaigns, for example. In other cases, such as mobile gaming, apps arguably represent a new category of "games" that increasingly compete with console gaming.

In the former case, apps are helpful in the same way that other channels are helpful; in the latter case the foundation for whole new revenue streams or business segments.

In a third set of cases, mobile apps are more about user engagement, making it easy for users to interact with content sites they also use when in tablet or PC mode. In yet other cases, mobile apps create a capability that might have indirect or direct monetization potential, but are important for the displacement of other apps that represent a revenue stream.

Facebook Mobile Messenger, for example, could disrupt mobile service provider text messaging revenue. Facebook Mobile Messenger


Wednesday, September 7, 2011

HTC Sues Apple Using Mobile Patents Obtained From Google


Google has granted HTC the rights to nine mobile patents. HTC now has sued Apple for infringing those HTC patents. HTC Sues Apple Using Mobile Patents Obtained From Google

The nine patents originated with Palm Inc., Motorola Inc. and Openwave Systems Inc., with Google taking ownership within the past year, according to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records.

Google recorded transfer of the patents to HTC on Sept. 1, according to the agency’s website.

It isn't clear whether any of the Motorola patents were obtained as part of the recent Google purchase of Motorola Mobility.

HTC sued Apple today in federal court in Delaware, claiming infringement of four of those patents that originally were issued to Motorola. Taoyuan, Taiwan-based HTC also amended a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, alleging infringement of three patents first issued to Openwave and two others originally owned by Palm. Google transfers patents

HTC earlier had filed suit against Apple using an earlier collection of patents. HTC sues Apple



Saturday, May 14, 2011

Family of Amazon Android Devices?

Rumor: Amazon has an “entire family” of Android devices coming this holiday
Amazon is preparing an “entire family” of Android devices that will launch this holiday shopping season, according to Taylor Wemberly at Android and Me. A smartphone might be among the devices, expected to feature tablet devices of various form factors.

Amazon already has gotten into the Android applications market space and online video rentals, so the move is not far fetched. Amazon has been really good at providing excellent customer service and a well-designed recommendation engine, so you can imagine the possibilities, over time, as those skills are applied to the mobile location feature and the shopping experience.

And since Amazon lives and dies by the ease of "buying something," it might not be too hard to suggest that Amazon is thinking about ways to integrate payments into the mix as well.

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Verizon, HTC Mull Smart Phone Targeted at Women

Verizon and HTC have taken that into consideration and are testing a new smartphone that would target that female demographic. Right now, the code name for the phone is the Bliss and its said to hit Verizon before the end of this year.

The slate style Android device might feature a softer color hue, offer various preloaded calorie counting and shopping apps, a wireless dock, and even an LED charm notifier for easy access when the phone is in a pocket.

read more here

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

PlayBook Runs Android Apps

Apparently the RIM PlayBook has an emulator that allows it to run Android apps. A wise move, one might suggest.

Monday, May 2, 2011

RIM Goes Multi-Platform, Losing Smartphone Battle?

In a move almost certain to be interpreted as a sign enterprises are migrating to iOS and Android devices and away from their past heavy reliance on BlackBerry devices, Research In Motion announced plans for a multi-platform BlackBerry Enterprise Solution for managing and securing mobile devices for enterprises and government organizations.

The solution is expected to incorporate secure device management for Android and iOS based devices and tablets, all managed from a single web-based console, RIM says.

Some might try to spin the announcement as an extension of BES features to other key enteprise operating systems, and that it is. But others will say the move suggests RIM already can see that enterprises and larger organizations are moving away from BlackBerry and towards Apple and Android devices.

In fact, some might already be ready to predict the possibility that RIM might someday be a provider of server solutions, not handsets.

RIM's business has traditionally been driven by IT departments at enterprises, as BES gave companies an easy way to do things like activate devices, manage passwords, push out software updates, and wipe lost or stolen devices clean.

That might be the future of the business, not handsets.

read more here

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Google, MasterCard, Citibank Team for Mobile Payments

Google is working with MasterCard and Citibank on mobile payments.

Thursday, April 28, 2011

Android Market Eclipses Apple App Store for Free Apps

The Google Android Market eclipsed the Apple App Store for iPhone in terms of free applications and now has 134,342 free applications, while the Apple App Store iPhone has 121,845 free applications, Distimo reports.

If all application stores maintain their current growth pace, approximately five months from now Google Android Market will be the largest store in terms of number of applications followed by the Apple App Store for iPhone and iPad, Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, BlackBerry App World and Nokia Ovi Store.

The rise of Windows Phone 7 and the relative decline of BlackBerry and Nokia as leaders in the smartphone category might have something to do with the state of the respective app stores. Some observers would say that the Microsoft deal with Nokia, which has Nokia essentially abandoning Symbian for Windows Phone 7, will vault Microsoft into position number three in the smart phone OS market, eclipsing RIM.

Looking at history, one would be hard pressed to imagine why RIM would remain a force, or perhaps even viable, in a market so dominated by the iPhone and Android, with Microsoft claiming the third spot, in terms of share. There is not much precedent for a viable "number four or five" provider in the mobile OS ecosystem. So as shocking as the assertion might be, it appears RIM's best days, even its existence as an independent company, are at grave risk.

The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace will also be larger than the Nokia Ovi Store and BlackBerry App World prior to the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace being available for even a full year, Distimo says.
One year after launching the iPad, Apple will be confronted with its first serious competition as both BlackBerry and Google enter the emerging tablet market.

Apple has already seized momentum and grown the App Store for iPad in the first year to 75,755 applications developed by 21,975 publishers. Daily downloads in the "Top 100 Overall" paid and free applications for iPad combined exceed 500,000, while the daily revenue in the Top 100 paid is approximately $400,000 excluding in-app purchases.

http://www.distimo.com/publications/

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

New Google Docs App for Android


The new "Google Docs" app for Android allows users to filter and search for their content across any Google account, then jump straight into editing docs using the online mobile editors. The app also allows users to easily share items with contacts on their phones, right from within the app.

The Docs app also allows users to upload content from their phones and open documents directly from Gmail. Users can add a widget to their home screens for easy access to three core tasks: jumping to your starred documents, taking a photo to upload, or creating a new document with one tap.
Using the app and the phone’s camera, users can turn photos with text into editable Google documents. Just create a new "Document from Photo" or select the camera icon from the widget, and a converted document will appear in the user's documents list shortly after the user snaps the picture.

One immediate use case: all those conference attendees who snap photos of slides during presentations now can turn the pictures into text documents for later sharing.

Users can also convert photos already stored on your phone by sharing them with the Google Docs app.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

U.S. Smartphone Market is a Bit Like Fashion

Smartphones and other mobile devices are a bit like fashion, introducing a great deal of volatility.

According to The Nielsen Company’s monthly surveys of U.S. mobile consumers from July 2010 to September 2010, consumers planning on getting a new smartphone had a very clear preference: A third (33 percent) wanted an Apple iPhone.

Slightly more than a quarter (26 percent) said they desired a device with the Google Android operating system. And 13 percent said they wanted a RIM Blackberry.

Those same surveys for January 2011 to March 2011 show significant changes. According to the latest figures, 31 percent of consumers who plan to get a new smartphone indicated Android was now their preferred OS. Apple’s iOS has slipped slightly in popularity to 30 percent and RIM Blackberry is down to 11 percent. Almost 20 percent of consumers are unsure of what to choose next.

Saturday, April 23, 2011

"We'll give you the phone and service, it's the data we want"

Some of the more-important revenue streams communications service providers have uncovered and discovered have been of the accidental sort. Some enhanced services, such as caller identification (caller ID) were essentially a byproduct of a conversion from analog to digital switching. The switches needed that information to work, but new features were possible as a consequence.

Many consumers considered "push button" phones to be a premium device when the transition to digital happened. Engineers would simply have said that using DTMF tones was simply a better way of inputting number information to switches that now were digital, in fact computers rather than electrical appliances.

There now seems a glimmer of understanding that among the next great wave of value provided by mobile networks, sensor data might prove an unexpected boon. There already is talk of the growing value of "machine to machine" networks, of course, where remote sensors such as meters and gauges of various sorts communicate with servers located elsewhere.

But there is something of potentially equally-interesting value growing, and like M2M, will be a business-to-business value, with potential revenue streams that match. "At Northeastern University in Boston, network physicists discovered just how predictable people could be by studying the travel routines of 100,000 European mobile-phone users," the Wall Street Journal reports. "The scientists said that, with enough information about past movements, they could forecast someone's future whereabouts with 93.6 percent accuracy."

That, of course, requires the permission of the users tracked, as the data is personally identifiable, so there is an opt-in requirement.

In other cases, anonymous data might be equally useful, even when anonymous. Researchers are studying user data, in aggregate, to understand social effects, influence, the spread of ideas and trends.

Of immediate value to mobile service providers themselves are the business-relevant social effects uncovered in one study. By mining their calling records for social relationships among customers, several European telephone companies discovered that customers were five times more likely to switch carriers if a friend had already switched. The companies now selectively target people for special advertising based on friendships with people who dropped the service. That's a practical illustration of applying knowledge about social influence for a very concrete business problem.

Marketers try to use knowledge about social influence to reach people who, their social graphs indicate, can persuade others in their social networks, and who have bigger social networks. It takes little to imagine that firms will be eager to strike deals giving them access to opt-in data from mobile service providers that help them identify and reach such people.

All of which suggests that data mining for patterns could develop into quite a value driver and revenue stream. Perhaps it always will be a stretch to imagine a time when such data is so valuable that a service provider can afford to give away devices and services in exchange for opt-in rights to track and sell such information. But it isn't hard to see that it could become a major revenue stream, either.

Privacy issues have come to the fore in recent days as researchers discovered that Apple iPhones and Android devices track user location. There are obvious privacy issues, though it is likely the data actually is most useful for Apple and Google only on an anonymous basis, to build better databases about signal strength, network coverage, data usage, locations and times, all of which historically have helped engineers plan facility upgrades, for example.

The fear is that such data could be stolen, a genuine concern, or that personally-identifiable information already is being shared with third parties, a concern that might strike some of us as far fetched, though the danger continues to exist.

But if researchers are correct, mobile phones will have immense new value as sensors. The data the sensors monitor will have value for marketing, sales and promotion, as well as many non-profit endeavors. You can say its one application of M2M, or you might argue it is related but separate. Either way, mobile sensor data looks like a huge potential deal.

The Really Smart Phone - WSJ.com (subscription required)

Monday, April 18, 2011

Twitter in Talks to Buy TweetDeck

Twitter is in advanced talks to buy TweetDeck Inc. for around $50 million, the Wall Street Journal reports.

TweetDeck is a popular third-party application programs that help Twitter users view and manage their tweets. TweetDeck has emerged as a favorite of heavy users of Twitter, letting people track tweets about multiple topics at the same time. The program, which many people download and use on their desktop computers, also lets people write tweets longer than 140 characters, among other features.

Twitter has encountered some static recently because developers fear Twitter now wants to clamp down on third-party apps that compete with features Twitter believes should be a core part of Twitter itself.

Google has encountered somewhat similar issues recently over new releases of Android, which some developers say Google develops in "too closed" a manner.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Smart Phone Users Consume 24 Mbytes a Day, 1/2 on Wi-Fi

A study of 150 smart phone users over a three-week period finds that panel members consume an average of 723 MBytes of data a month, an average of 24.1 MBytes of data a day. Of that, 21.5 MBytes is received, while only 2.6 MBytes is sent. Those figures include both wireless network and Wi-Fi consumption.

Looking only at data sent over cellular networks, the average data transfer is 12.1 MBytes a day, with Wi-Fi representing the remaining 12 MBytes of daily usage.

The data was gathered from Feb. 9, 2011 through March 2, 2011. Some 83 of the respondents use Android phones, 57 are iPhone users and 10 use RIM BlackBerry devices.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Steve Jobs Hid iPad From Google

Apple i-phone Versus Google Android
Steven Levy’s book “In the Plex” apparently reveals that Steve Jobs hid development of the iPad from Eric Schmidt while Schmidt was still on Apple’s board of directors.

Jobs reportedly didn’t like how Google’s OS was starting to match up blow for blow to iOS and didn’t want the same to happen with tablets. Jobs was angry because he felt that Android was ripping off the key features of the iPhone.

Read more here

Monday, January 31, 2011

Android Tablets Start to Take Market Share

No surprise here: as Android tablets appear in the market, Apple is going to lose some market share.

Wednesday, January 19, 2011

In the US Market, iPhone Outperforms Other Mobile Platforms in User Loyalty by a Wide Margin, Android is Second, Blackberry Fourth

The Apple iPhone scores 84 percent higher in loyalty ratings than the nearest competitor, Google Android. Among non-iPhone users, the number one preference for the next smartphone is iPhone.

The benchmark results by Zokem also show that older Windows Mobile devices and Nokia’s Symbian devices have already lost the game in the United States.

Both Microsoft and Nokia are, however, coming back with new offerings and trying to challenge the top three platforms – iPhone, Android and Blackberry – when measured by user loyalty.

During 2010 Android emerged as the single best selling mobile platform in the United States.

"Tokens" are the New "FLOPS," "MIPS" or "Gbps"

Modern computing has some virtually-universal reference metrics. For Gemini 1.5 and other large language models, tokens are a basic measure...